P.A.R. Ade, Z. Ahmed, M. Amiri, D. Barkats, R. Basu Thakur, D. Beck, 7), C. Bischoff, J.J. Bock, 8), H. Boenish, E. Bullock, V. Buza, J.R. Cheshire IV, J. Connors, J. Cornelison, M. Crumrine, A. Cukierman, 2), E.V. Denison, M. Dierickx, L. Duband, M. Eiben, S. Fatigoni, J.P. Filippini, 15), S. Fliescher, N. Goeckner-Wald, D.C. Goldfinger, J. Grayson, P. Grimes, G. Halal, G. Hall, M. Halpern, E. Hand, S. Harrison, S. Henderson, S.R. Hildebrandt, 8), G.C. Hilton, J. Hubmayr, H. Hui, K.D. Irwin, 2, 12), J. Kang, 5), K.S. Karkare, 10), E. Karpel, S. Kefeli, S.A. Kernasovskiy, J.M. Kovac, 16), C.L. Kuo, 2), et al. (46 additional authors not shown)

We present results from an analysis of all data taken by the BICEP2, Keck Array and BICEP3 CMB polarization experiments up to and including the 2018 observing season. We add additional Keck Array observations at 220 GHz and BICEP3 observations at 95 GHz to the previous 95/150/220 GHz data set. The $Q/U$ maps now reach depths of 2.8, 2.8 and 8.8 $\mu{\mathrm K}_{cmb}$ arcmin at 95, 150 and 220 GHz respectively over an effective area of $\approx 600$ square degrees at 95 GHz and $\approx 400$ square degrees at 150 & 220 GHz. The 220 GHz maps now achieve a signal-to-noise on polarized dust emission exceeding that of Planck at 353 GHz. We take auto- and cross-spectra between these maps and publicly available WMAP and Planck maps at frequencies from 23 to 353 GHz and evaluate the joint likelihood of the spectra versus a multicomponent model of lensed-$\Lambda$CDM+$r$+dust+synchrotron+noise. The foreground model has seven parameters, and no longer requires a prior on the frequency spectral index of the dust emission taken from measurements on other regions of the sky. This model is an adequate description of the data at the current noise levels. The likelihood analysis yields the constraint $r_{0.05}<0.036$ at 95% confidence. Running maximum likelihood search on simulations we obtain unbiased results and find that $\sigma(r)=0.009$. These are the strongest constraints to date on primordial gravitational waves.

Chi Tian, Matthew F. Carney, James B. Mertens, Glenn Starkman

We introduce and study a new scheme to construct relativistic observables from post-processing light cone data. This construction is based on a novel approach, LC-Metric, which takes general light cone or snapshot output generated by arbitrary N-body simulations or emulations and solves the linearized Einstein equations to determine the spacetime metric on the light cone. We find that this scheme is able to determine the metric to high precision, and subsequently generate accurate mock cosmological observations sensitive to effects such as post-Born lensing and nonlinear ISW contributions. By comparing to conventional methods in quantifying those general relativistic effects, we show that this scheme is able to accurately construct the lensing convergence signal. We also find the accuracy of this method in quantifying the ISW effects in the highly nonlinear regime outperforms conventional methods by an order of magnitude. This scheme opens a new path for exploring and modeling higher-order and nonlinear general relativistic contributions to cosmological observables, including mock observations of gravitational lensing and the moving lens and Rees-Sciama effects.

Antonio De Felice, Shinji Mukohyama, Masroor C. Pookkillath

The Minimal theory of Massive Gravity (MTMG) is endowed non-linearly with only two tensor modes in the gravity sector which acquire a non-zero mass. On a homogeneous and isotropic background the theory is known to possess two branches: the self-accelerating branch with a phenomenology in cosmology which, except for the mass of the tensor modes, exactly matches the one of $\Lambda$CDM; and the normal branch which instead shows deviation from General Relativity in terms of both background and linear perturbations dynamics. For the latter branch we study using several early and late times data sets the constraints on today's value of the graviton mass $\mu_{0}$, finding that $(\mu_{0}/H_{0})^{2}=0.119_{-0.098}^{+0.12}$ at $68\%$ CL, which in turn gives an upper bound at $95\%$ CL as $\mu_{0}<8.4\times10^{-34}$ eV. This corresponds to the strongest bound on the mass of the graviton for the normal branch of MTMG.

T. D. Kitching, A. C. Deshpande, P. L. Taylor

In this paper we address the challenge of extracting maps of spatially varying unknown additive biases from cosmic shear data. This is done by exploiting the isotropy of the cosmic shear field, and the anisotropy of a typical additive bias field, using an autocorrelation discrepancy map. We test this approach using simulations and find that the autocorrelation discrepancy map produces spatially varying features that are indicative of the additive bias field both in amplitude and spatial variation. We then apply this to the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 data, and find evidence for spatially varying additive biases of at most 0.002 on large scales. The method can be used to empirically inform modelling of the spatially varying additive bias field in any cosmological parameter inference, and can act as a validation test for cosmic shear surveys.